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Christmas Elves: Fey and Jade's Holiday Havoc
Christmas Elves: Fey and Jade's Holiday Havoc is a story by Maggie Finson and Babs Yerunkle narrating the Christmas adventures of Fey and Jade. It was published on December 28, 2008 and covers the period from December 18 to December 28, 2006. Synopsis 2006-12-18 Fey has been having problems with pushy advertisers wanting to hire her. On Poise's advice, she decides to hire an agent. She contacts Solicitor, a pushy and brash Whateley alumnus with big-time contacts, and Donald Finklestein, a smaller operator who works more like a public relations manager than an agent. After some deliberation, Fey decides to go with Finklestein—which doesn't sit well with Solicitor, who had even flown to Whateley on his own initiative to sign her up. Meanwhile, Don Sebastiano "convinces" Hekate to attempt capturing Fey under the same spell as Cavalier and Skybolt, which is due for renewal. Hekate engages the help of Solange, who finds out where Fey is going for the holidays and brings Solicitor, who was furious at Nikki, into the deal. 2006-12-19 Jade is ready to spend the holidays with Billie, when a phone call changes everything. Tennyo leaves on her own to rescue her parents (see The Christmas Crisis), and Nikki takes Jade with her to Kansas City instead. 2006-12-20 2006-12-21 2006-12-22 2006-12-23 2006-12-25 Nikki and Jade have a fairly uneventful Christmas, except for Jade getting a special purse from Thuban that allows her to carry all her equipment with her. Meanwhile, Hekate arrives at the Syndicate's Kansas City base of and begins preparations for the enslaving ritual. 2006-12-26 2006-12-27 2006-12-28 A couple days later, Fey has her first photo shoot after signing with Finklestein, with Jade animating three pixies for added atmosphere. On returning home, Solicitor contacts Nikki again, ostensibly to apologize and offer, as a gesture of good will, to set up another shoot for charity, all above board and done through Finklestein. Nikki ends up talked on doing it. On the way to the shoot, Jinn is diverted by a child with a problem. On the supposed shoot, Jade's pixies are captured in a magic circle and Jade is knocked out by one of the crew, while Solicitor slaps cold iron handcuffs on Fey. With all of them effectively neutralized, Hekate comes up and orders them all taken to the Syndicate base. At the base, Jade wakes up chained to a wheeled table, and unable to free herself because she had ran out of charges to cast. Hekate then proceeds to torture Jade in order to blackmail Fey to enter willingly the Fool's Circle where Cavalier and Skybolt already are—this particular circle being formed not by mere chalk drawing, but welded into the metal floor. Jade, being a regenerator and used to pain, taunts Hekate until she strikes a nerve. Desperate to save Jade, Nikki tries appeasing Hekate by entering the circle—but Hekate is mad with rage and buries her athamé in Jade's heart anyway. Hekate's plan has been going well, except for a minor snag: her athamé, which she needs for the ritual, got stuck in the table after trespassing Jade. She tells a henchman called Snake to take care of it and he takes Jade's body to a storeroom to work on it. However, Jade is not as dead as everybody thought: when the knife struck, she reflexively cast herself on her own body, becoming unconscious in the process. Using her telekinesis to pull the wounds closed, keep the blood flowing and the lungs moving, she helps her natural regeneration along. Meanwhile, Jinn figures something is wrong when she can't find Nikki and Jade, and calls Tennyo to sound the alarm. She manages to do that right before her charge expires, taking her back to Jade's body—who revives, startling Snake at the moment he was pulling the athamé out of her body with an winch. Now having a spare charge, Jade instantly frees herself. Before he can use the dagger again, she manages to deflect it to the side—cutting the circle that imprisoned the pixies in the process. With their help and a bit of blood-fury after "charging" Hekate's athamé, she quickly kills Snake. Now free, healed, with all her gear and a full complement of charges, Jade tasks herself to freeing Nikki. She uses one charge for the three pixies as a set (instead of one each as usual), one for turning Hekate's athamé into a spinning engine of death and another one to reanimate Snake's body. Leaving the storeroom, Jade is forced to split her team in order to find out where Nikki is, keeping only the pixies with herself. The Snake-zombie finds her, and manages to throw the keys to the handcuffs inside the circle before Hekate figures there's something wrong and destroys the body. The spell on Cavalier and Skybolt also begins to expire, although that's no help with the three of them inside the circle. Meanwhile, the other J-Team members are cutting a swath in the Syndicate's henchmen, with Jade creating more "zombies". Jinn in the dagger is half-insane and goes literally through a lot of henchmen before they manage to vaporize her "body" with a RPG. The base goes into full alert. Jade gets the Snake-zombie charge and turns back, now that she knows the right way, and sends the pixies ahead. The pixies proceed to attempt breaking the circle, first with hand grenades (which fail) and eventually succeed with a stolen RPG. Now Hekate has to deal not only with Fey, but also Cavalier and Skybolt, finally free after one year of imprisonment and abuse. While Cav & Sky attack Hekate, Nikki sends dozens of hobgoblins inspired by the movie Spider-Rats V after the henchmen, and figures out how to use her magic to open all the security doors in the complex, so Jade can get back. She then sends scores of hobgoblin-pixies to cause mayhem and distract the Syndicate goons. Fey then casts a "Threefold Returns" curse on both Hekate and Solicitor. In a desperate bid to escape, Hekate casts an expensive spell that creates three iron golems, immune to magic. Meanwhile, the Syndicate goons try attacking Fey with flamethrowers—but Fey seduces the fire element into her side and sends them against the golems. Hekate escapes, but with the curse on her heels. The Syndicate site commander sets the base to self-destruct, and Fey, Jade, Cav and Sky only narrowly escape before the building crumbles. Hekate sees the results of the curse on Solicitor—who has his face rot and all his clients drop him in a hurry. Hekate runs to the Necromancer for protection, before her mystical defenses crumble. And Nikki is left with some explaining to do to her mother... Follow-Ups The Penance Factor discusses some of the repercussions of the curse that Fey cast on Solicitor and Hekate. Medicine Girl covers Pejuta helping Skybolt and Cavalier after they are released from Hekate's mind-control spell. Characters * Solange (a.k.a "Hidden Jewel") * Solicitor * Donald Finklestein Mentioned * Carol Vanning * Jill Fleming * Linda Noir * BlackJack Lewis * Dustan Cobb * The Queen of England * Bill Gates Category:Stories Category:Babs Yerunkle Category:Maggie Finson Category:Gen1